


The One Where Ino And Hidan Are Soulmates

by Tozette



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Prompt Fill, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, blanket permission for podfic or translation, i think this actually qualifies as a romance, what are the chances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 10:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5494400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tozette/pseuds/Tozette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ino's just six the first time her soul mark disappears.</p><p>She wakes everybody in her house up, screaming, when it disappears. It hurts, that's true - a weird, sharp pain right through her chest that makes her heart beat rattle and her breath come short - but that's not really what upsets her. Losing the mark is like losing a limb. It feels - violating. Disfiguring.</p><p>[It happens again. And again.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Where Ino And Hidan Are Soulmates

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr prompt "Anonymous said to tozettewrites: soulmate au with hidan and ino".

Ino's isn't exactly the ideal soul mark to begin with. It looks like somebody wrote it with a kunai, all sharp edges and uneven jags. The calligraphy makes her father tsk and wonder about the standards of education these days.

And on top of that, all it says when she's finally old enough to decipher the appalling handwriting for herself is: "Che, give me _some_ credit!"

It's not even in polite form.

It could be worse, her mother assures her. "You never really know," she says, glancing slyly at Inoichi.

Ino doesn't know what her mother's mark says. She's been assured she'll be told when she's older. ("Like maybe twenty five," Inoichi mutters, out of her earshot.)

* * *

Ino's just six the first time her soul mark disappears.

She wakes everybody in her house up, screaming, when it disappears. It hurts, that's true - a weird, sharp pain right through her chest that makes her heart beat rattle and her breath come short - but that's not really what upsets her. Losing the mark is like losing a limb. It feels - violating. Disfiguring.

She panics and nothing can calm her. The screaming is high, ragged and persistent.

Inoichi ends up carrying her in circles, pacing around the kitchen table while she sobs brokenly into his neck. All of the lights are on, and she knows nobody's really sleeping. But she only sees a few people come to check, and then they're gone again.

"Sometimes it happens," says her father, with an aching sympathy in his voice. "Especially with ninja. We..." A pause. "We don't always live long lives."

"I want it back," she chokes.

"I'm sorry," he says helplessly, and she breathes in the scent of him and rubs her face on the hint of stubble he's wearing this early in the morning. He's not right, not who she wants, not quite.

When she's tired enough to stop crying, she falls asleep with her legs dangling on either side of his waist and her face on his shoulder.

(Inoichi carries her for hours yet, waiting until dawn comes and the sun rises high in the sky. He has to let go, has to go to work and do his job, but... not yet. He cleaves tightly to his daughter, cold with helpless fury, and does not let go.)

* * *

It... comes back.

It comes back the following morning, and Ino doesn't know enough to be upset by that.

"Perhaps he was- injured, or sick," says the medic who inspects it. "If his heart stopped..."

Ino nods blithely. "That means he's okay now, though," she points out. Her eyes are puffy and she's cranky from a lack of sleep, but she's terribly cheerful about the whole business.

Okay has varying definitions, though, and she can see it when her father scowls.

She isn't nearly as unobservant as the adults think she is, so she's well aware that her dad looks into the records of patients admitted to hospital that night.

(What she doesn't learn is that three of them fit his criteria - one fourteen year old chuunin back from a rough mission, an anorexic civilian, and one of the women under Ibiki's tender care.

None of these is his daughter's soul mate. He'd be lying if he said he was disappointed. Well. Perhaps the chuunin wouldn't have been a terrible disappointment. Possibly. Maybe.

Honestly, he's never seen such poor handwriting in his life. He's seen Kakashi's, for heaven's sakes. The mess on his daughter's left forearm is almost artistic for how ugly it is.)

* * *

It happens again.

And again.

Ino does eventually hear of a few people - a very few - to whom this has happened before, but never anybody to whom it's happened more than twice.

By the time Ino is twelve, she wakes in a panic every other night. Sometimes she has to leave class. Her arm is a constant pain, and she feels the stab wounds even when she doesn't bleed.

Ino learns not to freeze up when it happens. She is going to be a ninja. A damn good one, too - not another Yamanaka relegated to T&I. She cannot afford to freeze and panic every time her soul mark does this.

She still doesn't know why. Nobody can possibly be dead this often. The stress alone makes her cold and pale and underfed-looking, and that's without the physical trauma.

There's something wrong with her soul mark. Sakura knows, and her father knows. She thinks maybe Shikamaru knows - it's hard to say either way, it's not like she's told him. Her regular medic knows, because he helps her plan her training around stress managmenet.

There's something to be said for growing used to the pain of death.

Ino gets stabbed in the shoulder during a mission - a fairly routine one, but it does feature other low-level ninja. Her knee is dislocated and she's bleeding from hole somewhere near her collarbone, and she never even considers that the pain might be hers.

Her knee gives out, as dislocated joints are likely to do, but not before she's punched the rock genin in the face.

Asuma is ... _perplexed_.

"You didn't notice," he repeats dubiously, much later, while he's stitching her shoulder.

He smells like several kinds of smoke, as well as clean sweat and something sweet.

Ino shakes her head.

"You complained last week when you broke a nail," Asuma points out.

"Broken nails are very annoying," Ino replies loftily.

He makes a considering noise in the back of his throat. She's pretty sure he knows she's full of shit.

Still, she's never been subjected to her soulmate's _broken nails_. Serious injuries - mostly stab wounds - seem to be the extent of that connection.

* * *

Between graduation and the chuunin exams, Ino gets something of a reputation, and not necessarily the one she wants.

When she decided she would not be a T&I ninja, she had no delusions that she'd be any good at front-line work. But that seems to be precisely the reputation she's developed.

They say she doesn't feel anything.

People - dumb people, people like Naruto and Kiba - think that because she flinches and whines at papercuts and broken nails she's being - ironic, or something. They think she's pretending to have feelings.

She only finds this out because Sasuke - _Uchiha Sasuke,_ of all people - tells her.

"They say you can't feel pain," he says, and it must be the longest thing he's ever said to her.

For a change, Ino is not happy to hear his voice. She plays it off. "Mmm, do they?" she asks, leaning closer. She flutters her eyelashes.

He's not having it. "How?" he demands, all flashing eyes and skin like paper.

She clenches her fists. "I feel," she says, instead of carrying through with her acting.

His eyes narrow. He makes a faintly disgusted grunting noise and directs his interest elsewhere. She has no idea, in the end, if he believes her.

* * *

She knows _nobody_ believes her after the exams.

The preliminaries see her matched against a girl named Kin, from Sound. This woman, Ino can beat. She can feel it in her blood.

She does, too. She's good at genjutsu: she knows her mind techniques and her chakra control's good. The paralysis technique Kin uses is strange but not impossible to break - and when she does, Ino lunges for her without thinking, without breaking stride. She can feel the senbon go in, see the alarm on her opponent's face when she doesn't slow - and by then it's too late for a replacement.

Ino feints once and collides with her, tripping her up at the ankles. They go down and Ino twists - grabs Kin's arm, shoves her knee in her neck. The angle's awkward, but unless Kin has a third arm -

No. She doesn't.

The match is declared over, in Ino's favour, and then Ino passes out.

When she wakes in the infirmary, Shikamaru is watching her with dark, calculating eyes. "Fifty three senbon," he informs her, lifting the clipboard.

Ino tries to shrug, but her soul mark chooses that moment to disappear, and it comes out more like a pained twitch.

Shikamaru's brows furrow.

She swallows. "I won," she says, staring at the ceiling. Her voice comes out horrible and raspy, if only because she's convinced her throat's being cut. She clenches her fists and digs her nails into her hands.

Shikamaru sighs.

The next time she wakes up she discovers that he's asleep in the visitor's chair. Of course.

* * *

Ino considers telling people but - well. What does it say about Ino, really, if her soul mate is a man whose primary purpose in life seems to be to die all the goddamn time?

 _That's_ the second half of her soul?

She's not absolutely certain she prefers this reputation, but -

"Leave it," her father counsels.

He's experienced, and he's good at predicting people. She follows his lead.

("I've never seen anything like it," grins Mitarashi Anko, the proctor in charge of the second part of the chuunin exams. She's bouncing on her feet and beaming, and Inoichi entertains a brief but powerful fantasy of punching her. He contemplates inviting her to spar. No. Too out of character. Too obvious. He'll find something else. He smiles easily instead. He can be patient.)

* * *

Ino doesn't make chuunin- primarily, she hopes, because the final tournament of the exam was interrupted before she got to fight in it.

What she gets instead is an invasion. She fights side-by-side with Chouji, and the only person she cares about who dies is the Hokage. It could be so, so much worse.

She can't believe Shikamaru got sent on an A-rank mission without them. She's glad Asuma was there for him, but - still!

She looms over him when she complains about it, hands on her hips and toeing him gently - but not that gently - in the ribs while he lays on his back and stares at the sky.

"That boy," he says, slow and drawling.

"The monster?" she says dubiously. "Gaara?"

"The puppeteer," he corrects. He holds up his left foot, where the tail-end of somebody's handwriting peeks out from beneath his shoe.

Ino feels her own eyes widen. "Seriously?"

Shikamaru heaves a huge, put-upon, none-too-happy sigh. "Seriously."

"That's..."

There is a pause.

Shikamaru lets his eyes slide closed. " _Troublesome_ ," he says after a lingering moment.

* * *

Ino remains a genin for some time. She trains in the basics for her field medic qualification, and she learns more and more of her family's techniques.

Tsunade-sama inspects her soul mark, tells her there's nothing she can do about it, and mostly leaves her alone. This is pretty much what Ino has come to expect, but it's a little disheartening that the best medic in the world can't help her.

"I can help," Tsunade tells her, flat and grumpy and maybe a little bit drunk. Ino decides she's supposed to pretend she doesn't notice when Tsunade-sama's drunk before noon. "But severing the bond carries a lot of complications - not least that you'll lose your soul mate. Stay on your stress management plan and take your painkillers when it happens." She shrugs, like living with severe chronic pain is just one of those things.

Ino debates asking her to do it anyway.

She goes so far as to look up the complications.

They are... severe.

In the end, she agrees with Tsunade, even if she wants to hate her for her delivery of that news.

* * *

Asuma dies, and Ino swears she can feel it.

* * *

There are plenty of people dying across the elemental nations, and it wouldn't explain all the other times, but... All the same, Ino worries and wonders.

She needn't have. It comes to pass that his soulmate is that beautiful jounin with the smoky red eyes, Yuuhi. She is forced to declare it to receive his body.

Ino aches for her.

She aches for herself, too; Asuma-sensei is one of the supports her whole life leans on. She misses him in ways she has never expected.

Shikamaru is worse off, sleepless and guilty and relentless in his drive for it. She isn't sure he knows how bad he's gotten in the time after the death.

Ino spends a lot of her time with her father for a few weeks.

And maybe she puts her hand on his arm and hugs him and clings a little in that time, but if he notices - and she's sure he does because he never _doesn't_ \- he says nothing about it.

* * *

The men who killed Asuma are ...scary.

Shikamaru's plan doesn't take advantage of Ino's supposed "inability" to feel pain, and Kakashi never questions it. It's a bit of a relief.

Ino has never felt so out of her depth. The big, dark-skinned bastard is Kakuzu and he is terrifying on his own: monsters errupt from him and spew elemental chakra straight at them. She's not even exaggerating. He might have been human once, but she's not so sure about that anymore - especially not once his shirt gets ripped and the towering, shuddering masked things crawl out of him to attack.

The other one is worse. He's pretty, superficially: pale and well-formed, scarless skin and strong smooth muscles. She could get behind that, if he hadn't killed her teacher.

He's rude. He's crass. He's... enthusiastic.

She is distracted, repeatedly, by the shrill whistles, whoops and happy cries he makes when he's attacking. He twists mid-air to redirect his scythe. He leaps and flips and laughs and... he's compelling, in a way.

He flings himself into danger like he doesn't feel a thing, and Kakuzu hurls fire and lightning and malestrom winds right after him. It doesn't even slow him down.

He is Hidan, and she knows he is more or less immortal.

(Kakuzu chokes her.

She very nearly loses consciousness, and only Shikamaru's quick thinking saves her and Chouji.

Ino is so outclassed it's exceeded 'not funny' territory and moved right back into hilarity.)

Ideas and thoughts flash through her mind, discarded one after another. She is looking for weaknesses, trying to predict, searching for motives, but - in the end, all she can do is identify weaknesses she is too slow or too weak to exploit, and all the planning comes down to Shikamaru.

He corners Hidan, hurling explosive notes at him with the tips of his shadows, chasing him up the length of a barren tree into the sky.

Ino sees the moment he's got him: Hidan leaps into the air to dodge one thrown knife, and then he's already airborn and she knows, and from the sudden shift of his expression he knows, that he can't dodge it.

"Got him!" she yells to Shikamaru, jubilant and vicious with it, and -

He twists mid-air, slams his scythe into the side of the tree, and lands with a heavy - and probably painful - _thump_ upon its handle.

"Che! Give me _some_ credit!" he calls back, baring his teeth.

* * *

Ino's stomach drops out through her feet.

She feels like she's been gutted.

_No, no, no no no nononono-_

* * *

She says nothing in return, but her concentration is shot. She's incapable of thinking. She follows Shikamaru's directions by rote, and he's shooting her weird looks but they both know they can't afford -

_No._

Ino lets Shikamaru draw Hidan away without ever mentioning it, without even saying anything. There is a buzzing in her head and a pain in her arm. She feels dizzy and shocky.

"You're seriously underestimating Hidan," says Kakuzu conversationally.

"You're seriously underestimating Shikamaru," she snarls back, and it's the first thing she's said in some time. It breathes some life back into her.

She doesn't know him. She doesn't need him.

Kakuzu ignores her like she hasn't even spoken. That, too, pisses her off.

By the time Naruto arrives, sweating and dirty but with victory painted across his face and crackling chakra already in his hands, Ino is almost angry enough not to care.

She feels it when Shikamaru lights the explosives. The pain is phenomenal, and it doesn't abate.

* * *

It doesn't abate for days. Even two weeks after, when the fight is fading from the thoughts of the others, Ino feels it. She wakes up with unfamiliar prayers on her lips. She feels the ragged pain of her torn limbs.

She moves her fingers, shifts her body, and she is sincerely surprised by it. She can move. She is free. She is not broken, not in pieces, not trapped.

She's fine.

Hidan is not fine, but Hidan is not Ino, Hidan is -

Hidan is the other half of Ino's soul.

Apparently.

_Evidently._

* * *

When Ino digs up the pieces of her soulmate, half-mad with pain and adrenalin, fear and loathing and too many feelings to think about, she stares at his mean smile, his dirty, bloodied teeth, and she's furious.

This is the other half of her. _This_.

When she pulls his neck from the pile of detached limbs, she's unsurprised to see that her words on his skin read, simply: "I hate you."

Yeah. That's - pretty much what she said when she uncovered his face. _I hate you._

 _Hate_ , though, might be - _must_ be - disingenuous. It doesn't stop her from pulling him back together. It should, but... it doesn't. She's drawn to him. The pull won't leave her alone.

She puts him back together with so much less effort than they expended taking him apart.

Field medic lessons. What a joke.

 _'I hate you_ ' doesn't stop him from looking at her with wild eyes and filthy hair, from putting his hands over the words on her wrist and hissing that his god has given him a gift.

Ino might hate him, but she doesn't fear him. She should.

"Get up," she says, interrupting when he's telling her about - glorious mutual suffering or something. "Get _up_ ," she snarls again, kicking him in the thigh with all the strength her anger can give her.

"I've felt it every time you've died in the past _decade_ ," she says to him, in a voice that would be a scream if she wasn't so scared of being discovered. She continues with the most biting sarcasm: "I know about _suffering._ Now _get up_ so we can get out of here, you-"

He puts his hand over her mouth. "Seriously?" he grins, lopsided and frankly demented. He looks so pleased.

She slaps him. Hard. He jolts with it, his heads snaps sideways, and when he regains his balance he licks a fleck of blood from his mouth and just smiles wider.

Ino can see it. He's mad. Mad, mad, mad, with gleaming eyes and a fine fevered shiver in his hands. She thinks of Asuma, of the delighted good cheer with which he'd gone after Kakashi. She thinks of his wild laughter.

For the first time in a long time - maybe _forever_ \- she feels... calm. There's no panic, no burning in her arm. She doesn't hurt. She puts her hand in the spot where she's just slapped him, drags it down his jaw to his neck. Her writing is right there. _I hate you_.

She's... not sure.

She _should_ be.

"Hey," he breathes. "Hey, what's your name?"

She swallows, looks up at him. Awkwardly, she lifts her hand. "Ino."

His smile is a thing of terror. There's still blood between his teeth, and dirt, and his breath is terrible. Her heart beats faster at the sight but she can't even convince herself that she's afraid.

**Author's Note:**

> This got way too long to include as a "drabble" or a "ficlet". I feel like this one is pretty much an actual fic at this stage. It was one of those weird ones that just kind of happened, too. If you liked it, drop me a comment to let me know what you liked about it. :)


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